


I want Dean to Have a Home

by astrothsknot



Series: Imitating Angels [12]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: Christmas, Dean with a family, Gen, John's watching over them, Sam with a family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 19:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13302138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrothsknot/pseuds/astrothsknot
Summary: The kind of Christmas they never had and he couldn't give them.





	I want Dean to Have a Home

Title: I Want Dean To Have A Home  
Author: Astrothsknot  
Fandom: SPN-Buffyverse.  
Rating: PG, some swearing.  
Characters: Sam, Dean, Faith, Lily (OFC), John, Mary  
Disclaimer: The Winchesters belong to Eric Kripke, Faith to Joss Whedon, Lily Scott belongs to me  
Set Christmas 2008

John can hear the shrieks and yells from here. He’s about a hundred yards from the house. It’s quiet in that way that everything is when it snows, so the yelling coming from the house is louder than it actually is.

And it’s not just the kids. The four adults are making just as much noise. John can’t make out words from this far, but he does recognise voices. Sam’s protesting something, but he really doesn’t sound too bothered by it. Dean’s tone is mocking, so nothing new there, then. It’s heartening that nothing has changed that much, even after all this time.

John moves closer, going through the door. You’d think they lock the doors, you never know who’s about. Then again, the house is so far away from anything, it doesn’t really matter. He looks down, and yeah, the salt-line’s been kicked through.

“Green, right hand, Sam!” Two voices, one childish, one older, but not yet an adult, giggle. John can hear Dean swear under his breath.

“Sam, get your crotch out my face! Duncan, are you doing this on purpose?”

He’d have torn them a new one for that. What the hell have they been teaching those kids?

He can see them in the living room, food piled up on the table. Stands to reason they’d have a buffet rather than a sit down meal. None of them have the patience to sit down at a table for that length of time. Dean did for the first few years, when Mary was alive, falling asleep in his soup, more often than not.

“You should be able to reach that, Sammy. You‘re long enough.”

“Bite me, Faith.”

John looks down the hall, and sees they’ve added new rooms. He’s never understood why they’re still room-mates after all these years. He walks off into the kitchen. In many ways, it’s like the one he lost. Kids’ drawings are on every wall and door. Handprints from the newest ones have pride of place on the fridge. Joanna Mary Winchester Wilkins, 11.2.2008, Dean‘s second. They hadn’t seen him at the birth, he’d kept to the background. It was easier that way. Faith had put her foot down over the surname. There was nothing wrong with her name, she’d said. Besides, your son has my name.

The three of you can change, then, Dean had retorted. It’s not as if it’s your real name anyway. It had probably been a bad idea to have that argument with a woman in labour, because she’d grabbed hold of his balls, instead of his hand. She’d not let go once in the entire four hours, 12 minutes and thirty-four seconds. Even if she hadn’t been born that day, and they’d all been at the hospital, they still would have spent that night awake, and watching, salt along the doors and sills.

They’d done the same when Jessica Elizabeth Winchester Scott had come into the world, 5.2.2008. Sam’s firstborn child. He’d have known that without looking at the name. He’d been at that birth too. Lily had passed out for an hour after the birth and he’d watched Sam hold his daughter in his arms, just marvelling at her fact of her creation. John could remember when it had been his turn to hold her father in his arms. He never could believe that he’d been part of the creation of this miracle and that this wonder had been entrusted to his keeping.

“Lily, yellow, right hand.”

“Christ, Lily, you weigh a ton.”

“You’re a big, strong man, Dean. You can take it.”

John would have been there, too. Out of sight, but still watching. They’d salted the delivery rooms, passing it off as a religious practice, which he supposes it is. He taught them to do it religiously.

John still worries for them. On one level, he’s sorry that his name has died out, but bearing in mind that all his grandchildren are named for dead people, he figures they need all the breaks they can get. Demons, ghosts, almost everything in the afterlife has a long memory and eternity to brood on it. Once you’re in this life, there’s no out.

That’s why his youngest grandchildren are called Jessica and Joanna. It tears at him that there’s a second generation of Winchesters to hunt and be hunted.

“Red, left foot, Faith.”

“Yay for pilates!”

John’s not a fool. He knows that his family, like all hunting families, are targets. When the Bogeyman goes to bed at night, he checks his cupboards for Winchesters. Conversely, he’s proud as hell. My dad and his dad before him.

He’s still hearing whoops and yells from the living room. “Blue, left foot, Dad,” yells a voice he knows to be his grandson, from Dean. John feels sorry for Joey. It would have been better if she were the eldest or had been a boy. She’ll have a schizophrenic upbringing. Her father will make sure she can use a shotgun, and that every boy knows she can use it. He’ll also make sure that every boy knows that he has a shotgun, and he damn well has used it.

Jelly - so-called by Richard, who can’t say Jessica - will have a slightly more relaxed upbringing. But only slightly. An adoring older brother, who, while mostly likely not a Winchester, has at least been raised by them, and an older cousin who most definitely is, he doesn’t think anyone will giver her any shit. Unless of course it’s them. Do they still make Nair?

“Dean, move to the other blue, or Sam and Faith will have to kill us.”

“If you move, Dean, I’ll have to kill you. No brothers should be that close.”

John looks out the window, and sees that night is falling. Soon it will be time for him to go, and he wonders if he can stay long enough to catch a glimpse of Mary. Sometimes he manages it. Mostly he doesn’t.

One of the girls is crying. It’s Jelly, and neither of her parents is free to get her bottle. It doesn’t matter. “I’ll get it,” says Duncan, springing up. He makes sure that Richard knows what he’s doing with the game. He picks up his little sister, cuddling and cooing to her.

“I know how to play Twister, Duncan,” Richard addresses him with the disdain that only a five year old can manage. The tangle of relatives on the mat splutter.

Duncan just grins, and pads into the kitchen, going to the fridge, and pulling out a bottle. He puts it in the microwave, all one handed. John’s seen him reload a bowgun the same way. The teenager turns round.

“Hi, John,” he says. “Merry Christmas.”

“Same to you, son.” John looks at this child with more interest than the others. He’s tall, and dark, same build as him and Sam. He’s not Sam’s. That’s not the question. He might be John’s. Lily had her fun before he was born, and while John’s heart was Mary’s, his body was his. He wasn’t a monk, especially when he was on a bender. He asked Lily once, and she shrugged. “He’s mine.”

That was all the answer he ever got. Lily has been a much better mother than he ever was a father.

He’s got the self-possession of Dean at that age, both used to dealing with domestic life, and hunting life in equal measure. John was there the night he made his first kill. Duncan had been nine years old, shot a shtriga before his mother could enter the room to finish the job.

He jiggles Jelly gently, she’s just fretting slightly as she waits on her bottle. Yeah, he could be John’s, but it’s the eyes that make him doubt that. Duncan’s eyes are tequila gold. Most people don’t believe it’s natural, but it is.

John remembers visiting Lily in hospital after that exorcism went bad. It wasn’t long after that, she’d told then she was pregnant.

“I wish they could see you,” says Duncan. “So they’d know that you know we’re ok.”

John smiles, taking the picture of Duncan and Jelly with him in his heart. She has Mary’s mouth. The microwave beeps, and when Duncan turns back, John has left.

He passes Mary on the path, and she only has time to smile, before going into the house. This is the deal they made, with the Powers That Be. John guards his family by day, and Mary has the nights.

Gods and monsters have long memories and an eternity to brood over past hurts by hunting families, visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, for there is no out once in this life.

John guards the days and Mary guards the nights, for a storm is coming, and the Winchesters are smack in the middle of it.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this years ago and have just found it on my DW. I would have written it differently, had I known how IA was going to go. But I still like it and want to put it up.
> 
> Because someone will ask, John is not Duncan's father. It's so long ago now, that I can't remember who was. But family don't end in blood, does it?


End file.
